A fugitive charged with bilking more than $129 million out of investors in a Ponzi scheme has surrendered in San Francisco.

William Wise, 62, a former North Carolina resident, faces charges of conspiracy, mail fraud and wire fraud. Also charged in the case is Jacquline Hoegel, 55, of American Canyon. In February, U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag said they could each face 30 years in prison and a fine of $1 million for each count of conspiracy, mail fraud and wire fraud, Haag said.

Federal prosecutors said they promised investors a 16 percent return on their investment, but instead of investing the money overseas, as they promised, they used it to pay earlier investors - and spent it on themselves, prosecutors said.

Investors had lost $75 million by March 2009, when the Securities and Exchange Commission shut down the scheme, prosecutors said.

"When you take it and blow it on prostitutes and world travel, you don't usually have money left over for the poor investors," Richard Roper, a Texas lawyer who was the receiver in the civil case brought by the SEC, told the Raleigh (N.C.) News and Observer.

Roper confirmed to the North Carolina newspaper that Wise has turned himself in. Hoegel, who ran the pair's investment office in Napa, was arrested earlier this year and is free on $150,000 bail, authorities said earlier.

As authorities moved in on him, Wise fled to Canada, where he holds citizenship.

"I'm prepared to take my lumps," Wise told the Toronto Star. "If I didn't feel badly, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. I've helped cause a lot of pain. Regardless of whether it was my intention or not, the result has been horrendous, horrific."